Consumer Engagement: Creating Bonds with Brands

"The heart of engagement is 'turning on' a mind," according to ARF Chief Research Officer Joe Plummer. One of the biggest questions marketers face is how to hold the interest and long-term commitment of new or potential consumers. The answer: consumer engagement; a consumer’s active interaction with a brand or brand idea. Consumers will tell you, though not in so many words, that the brands to which they are most loyal are those with which they have felt a connection. Maybe they are part of a rewards program or they “discovered” the store or product; they might have been asked to give feedback on a product sample, or perhaps they chatted or blogged online with a representative from the company. Whatever the individual story, the common thread lays in the lengthy and involved process marketers are undergoing of engaging consumers in their brand. This week, in an effort to keep up with the constant evolution of the marketing world, I explored the blogoshpere and made two comments, which I have also included below. The first post from the blog, “Beyond Madison Avenue” was written by Danny Nathan, a freelance brand strategist for a wide range of companies in New York and Texas. Nathan discusses the importance of experience-based branding through the lense of a unique clothing store in Japan. The second post from the blog, “Marketing Hipster” was written by Cord Silverstein, a strategic marketing and communications veteran whose 15+ years of experience has led him to the position of Director of Engagement Marketing at Capstrat, a strategic marketing and communications firm in North Carolina. Silverstein weighs the risks of online consumer engagement in a highly litigious society with the rewards to be gained from attempting it.

Post 1: Beyond Madison Avenue: “Don’t create a store, create an experience”

I understand the desire to stand out in a world drowning in advertising clutter, but this retailer seems to be taking that stance a bit far. While I admit the name was intriguing and the clean, modern design of the store (as pictured in your post) was rather refreshing, there comes a point at which the question of identity should be addressed if a business is to thrive. Having read your blog, I went to the website and spent several perplexing minutes trying to decide whether the Center for Cosmic Wonder was, in fact, a clothing store as your post intimated or a combination art gallery and new-age spa. The average consumer will not spend that time to make such a distinction. Clearly, the sleek, “voyeuristic” experience that CCW created for its customers is both innovative and unique, but if new consumers are lost before they can participate in that distinctive experience, the point is moot. The only way to maintain market share in such a competitive industry is to grow. To ensure growth, businesses must engage potential consumers, but that can only be accomplished if consumers first understand the products or services being offered. An effective brand consists of identity and differentiation, but without a clear identity, differentiation merely leads to confusion and a dearth of engaged customers.

Post 2: Marketing Hipster: “Engage Your Customers or Die”

Online consumer engagement is vitally important to all companies, but most especially for those on the larger end of the spectrum. With the slow, but steady demise of mass media strategy, companies have to be creative in the way they reach and secure new customers. Creating individual connections with potential consumers is one of the surest ways of producing that all-important repeat-customer. People are looking for more from businesses in which they invest. Between knock-offs and generic brands, products themselves are becoming more and more like commodities, so the extra things (like personal contact) that companies incorporate really make the difference in customer loyalty. The issue of “how [businesses] go about engaging these online conversations while…protecting their brand and company” is a touchy one. Clearly, misinterpreted or misinformed statements, and their litigious consequences, would be detrimental to a company, but the opportunity cost of allowing consumers to form primary bonds with competitor brands far outweighs the potential risk—especially when that risk can be diminished, as Nathania suggested, through properly trained media and consumer-relations personnel. The concept of employing company spokespeople is not new. Essentially, it just extends public relations to a new medium, and tweaks the structure of the classic press release to accommodate the variation. In terms of “who should respond and how,” again, I propose the PR department working closely with other involved departments. Delegations from the product team or finance department should absolutely be consulted for the necessary factual backbone of the response, but the skills of the PR team are uniquely suited to addressing consumer concerns with minimal negative impact to the company.

Relationship Marketing: The Key to the Gen Y Conundrum

Marketing, as a discipline, has evolved dramatically over time to match each new stage of product innovation and technological advancement. In years past, marketers relied heavily on the “mass marketing” approach designed to hit as many people with as few messages as possible. For a while, that worked. Modern consumers, however, have evolved to appreciate a more diverse view that lends itself more to customization than mass appeal. Thus pull marketing, an approach designed to stimulate grassroots demand, was born, and with it, came a focus on building relationships between consumers and brands. Relationship marketing, with its focus on consumer engagement, improves products and brand loyalty, while allowing increasingly savvy consumers to leverage brand image, leading to a more complex, but also more symbiotic relationship between market and marketer than ever before.

A key impetus to this shift toward relationship-based marketing strategy emerged as “Gen Y,” or the “Millennium Generation” began to reach buying age. This segment is both a dream and nightmare for marketers, who have coined their own descriptive phrase for the 10-25 year old demographic. “The unreachables,” according to USA Today’s Bruce Horovitz, are computer savvy, ethnically diverse, empowered young people who spend roughly $200 billion annually and don’t read or watch TV as much as previous generations. They have grown up competently navigating through cyberspace, finding answers to their own questions and curiosities and being encouraged to contribute to adult discussions. They have friends and family with different ethnicities and backgrounds. And they were born into an environment completely saturated with marketing ploys. Luckily for marketers, this has not spawned a Gen X-like cynicism, but instead, a strategic consumption and absorption of media and advertising. In fact, many Gen Y-ers are now putting marketing/branding efforts to their own personal use as a means of self-expression. They live in a fast-paced environment that demands constant multi-tasking in thought as well as action. Identifying with and displaying brands with distinct meaning can serve as an easy cue to others about who they are and what they believe and also help them identify like-minded people among the multitude with whom they interact on a daily basis.

A study conducted by Saatchi & Saatchi designed to delve a bit deeper into this growing trend found that, “the defining value of this generation is "connexity": the importance of staying connected in order to grow… As a result, for brands to succeed tomorrow, they must forge connections with consumers that go beyond simple product function.” This means that marketers must show a genuine investment in their potential consumers: their likes, dislikes, and, most importantly, personality, in order to appeal to them. As companies try to evolve to better reach their target market, they create products and brand image that better suit consumers’ needs and desires because consumers are often actively involved in the development process. Consequently, companies build brand equity as consumers respond to the ownership they take in the brand. Perhaps the largest shot-in-the-arm for relationship marketing came in the form of networking sites such as myspace and facebook. Originally used for networking among individuals, these sites have opened up a whole new opportunity for marketers seeking to build relationships with their consumers. Companies have created profiles on myspace in order to “friend” loyal customers giving them access to discounts or other perks. In return, they are prominently displayed on the “friend’s” page where the brand is sure to get exposure to like-minded individuals, thus increasing brand permeation in the target population. Marketers utilize facebook “groups,” an application that allows users to create and search for pages devoted to their interests, in much the same way.

Marketing has become a dynamic enterprise. Young, modern consumers demand more from the brands that court their discretionary income, but once they have proven themselves, consumers also give back to the brand. Marketers’ main concern at present is reaching out to their target market in ways that show their sincere interest in each and every consumer and everything about which they care deeply. Bottom line: the more a brand can behave like a friend or facilitate social interaction or self-image, the more successful that brand will be at capturing the elusive Millennium Generation.